


Quiet

by schrijverr



Category: 1917 (Movie 2019)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Introspection, Sad Ending, Sad Will Schofield, Suicidal Thoughts, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:27:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23409031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schrijverr/pseuds/schrijverr
Summary: Will had always been quiet.This is the story of how he found and lost his voice again through a happy boy in the middle of an awful war.
Relationships: Will Schofield/Tom Blake - implied
Comments: 4
Kudos: 23





	Quiet

**Author's Note:**

> I almost never write something sad and this hurt me to write, but for something new I tried, I'm pretty proud of it honestly
> 
> You can also find this work on my tumblr, also @schrijverr. Hope you pop in and say hi! :)

Will had just turned eighteen when the war broke out. He was old enough to sign up for the war effort and he did along with millions of others. He’d always been a quiet kid, but he loved to read and he had been taken by the grand adventures the characters went on, so he hoped that this would be the start of his very own adventure.

This hope was crushed almost as soon as Will arrived on French soil. He was send to Marne to fight by the river Ourcq. Will didn’t know it was called this at the time, he had only learned that days later when they’d dug themselves in, Germans on the other side. When the battle was done and the fields had turned into no man’s land. When the idea that this war was an adventure was beaten out of him. He looked and only saw a new sort of slaughterhouse.

Yes, Will had always been quiet, but now, now he barely say a word.

He eventually got some friends, it was hard not to become acquainted with some people when most of your evening activities consisted of sitting around together. They talked about everything and nothing, Will learned more about people’s sex-life than he had ever wanted. He even shared some things about himself, although it was far out of his comfort zone to do so.

There was Hendrickson, who was full of smiles and laughs, with more jokes stored in his head than there was time to tell them. 

There was Ryan, who had big dreams of becoming a politician and marrying a rich girl, never taking offense in the reverse marrying-rich jokes from the others.

There was Holland, who shared the silence with Will when the rambunctiousness got too much, but who also had a voice of gold that helped them when the nightmares got too bad and the days too long.

There was Graham, who was as dirty as he was religious, much to the amusements of others, but he was there to say the prayers when it seemed like their last moments had arrived.

Then there was the Somme.

Hendrickson fell in the first wave over the trenches, the closed formation proving a mistake. Ryan got stuck in the barbed wire and shot, the munition not enough to destroy them like they’d been promised. Holland blown up by their own mines that were timed wrong, too early and too late. Graham, who had bled out with his cross still clutched in his hand. And Will, the one who survived.

He survived every god forsaken day at the Somme, all 171 days he lived. He got a medal and a leave out of it, along with memories he could never forget and nightmares that would haunt him till the day he died.

His mother and sister knew he had never been a talker, but they weren’t prepared for the grave silence that Will carried with him.

He had been back for a few days, Lance Corporal Schofield, leading by example on the front lines, when the new supply forces came. They were all fresh out of training with hope in their eyes and young unhardened faces. 

Will avoided them as much as he could. He had done this song and dance before. He would sit with them, get to know their names and faces, personality traits and then they would die. And Will couldn’t go through that again, so he found a tree and made it his tree. He sat there when he had time off and he didn’t talk to anyone unless he had orders.

The new Privates soon learned to leave him alone, no one wanted to mess with the quiet one that had been here since the start. One of the longest surviving soldiers on the front and how he wished that fact was different.

Yes, everybody left him alone, just like he wanted, everyone except one.

Lance Corporal Blake, who had gotten that rank on good instinct at training before he had even arrived. He was young, just turned nineteen around Christmas. He was young and it showed, it showed in his enthusiasm, his smiles and in the stories he told. He was a goof and he lightened the mood around camp, always in for a game of cards or some small talk.

He was the opposite of Will in every way, but still he had chosen Will to follow around everywhere.

He was there next to Will when the man woke up and he would follow him to the Mess, they were assigned to dig together and to be the look out. Yet Blake didn’t get bored, he just talked and talked, with happy hand movements and open smiles. He wouldn’t look expectantly at Will when he asked a question, but Will didn’t answer, instead he would shrug and move on like nothing happened. He would even sit in silence next to Will and watch the sun go down.

Will was waiting for the day the smile disappeared and the stories ceased, when Blake would realize the hell he’d found himself in and give up on being lively or, even worse, when there was a battle from which Will would return once more, but there would be no Blake the next day, because his body had become part of the landscape while his soul went up to the heavens and all his mother would get was a letter about how brave her son had been.

Will hoped that day would never come.

It was early January 1917 when Will opened his mouth without having to for the first time in months. He had barely been aware that he had done it, he had only answered Blake’s question. The boy had been going on about his home and the fields when he had asked Will: “So yeah, I help in the fields in the summer. Where are you from? What do you do in the summer?”

Will had shrugged and said: “London, but not really the good part. I just work in the factory, or I used to at least.”

Normally after Blake had asked a question he would continue on talking, but now he had fallen silent. He was looking at Will with an open mouth, which Will only noticed after he looked at the other when he had fallen silent for a few seconds. He raised an eyebrow and asked: “What?”

His own eyes had grown wide the moment he realized what he had done and he clasped his hand over his mouth to silence words already spoken. He had talked, but that wasn’t the thing that bothered him the most, it was what came with the fact that he had talked that worried him. He only talked when it was necessary or when he was close with someone. It hadn’t been necessary, so that only left being close. 

He couldn’t afford it to be close with someone, but now he was. He hadn’t even realized it, but Blake had grown on him and now they were friends. He was friends with Blake and it was too late, when the boy died, the last piece of his heart would die as well.

His brain was screaming at him to run away, to get away from Blake and hope his heart hadn’t gotten too attached. That he could still cut his ties with the other if he ran now. He was almost turning away when Blake smiled and he realized that he was in too far. He knew he couldn’t turn away, not now and not later, his heart had gripped Blake close and wasn’t about to let go. 

Still smiling and unaware of the turmoil he was causing Blake said: “That’s still necessary work, Scho. I mean, helping on the fields isn’t exactly glamorous either, but it is fun. You see, me and Joe used to go there and just fuck shit up when we were little and now those people are our bosses, but we were never caught, so they don’t know it was us. We made a game out of it: how many times can we vaguely mention the stuff we got up to before they figure it out? It’s amazing.” and Blake was chattering on once more, leaving Will to follow him, because there was nothing else to do. 

He had been a quiet kid, whose silence was a shield. A shield, which was now being thorn down slowly.

Three months later and Will said about one fifth of their conversations, not nearly taking the lion share, but still talking quite a bit, much to Blake’s excitement. In that short period of time Blake learned that Will had a mother who also worked in the factories and a father who had died at Verdun, but his sister had married quite a well off man and she didn’t need to work at all, she could care for her two children. Twin girls that Will loved a lot, he had jokingly commented that he was the fun uncle however unlikely that may seem, but that was also because he was their only uncle. He had surprised his friend with his dry comments and banter. Blake also learned about Wills love for books and poetry and he would listen to Will softly recite them while they sat together watching the sunsets like they had always done.

It was now early April and they had fallen asleep by Wills tree that had slowly become their tree. The Sargent was waking Blake up telling him to pick a man and grab his kit. Will already knew, who Blake would pick, of course he did, because that’s what he had done since he arrived. He had picked Will and Will had followed his lead.

The mission they were send on seemed impossible and Will wanted to wait, to prolong their time together, because something deep down told him that this wasn’t going to end well. It wasn’t going to end well and Will would live, because that was all he had done, he had lived while everything collapsed around him. But Blake wouldn’t listen, he kept on walking and Will kept on following, because there was nothing else he could do.

When the rat tripped the wire he thought that his end had finally come, he vaguely felt bad that Blake would be buried with him, but an ugly and bigger part of him was glad that he didn’t have to live on while Blake died. Yet, the world wasn't so kind, there was a hand pulling him along and miraculously both made it out of there alive.

Will got a bit of hope, so far everything was going as well as it could. Maybe they would make it, both of them, with Blake chattering and he himself commenting here and there. Then they were suddenly talking about medals and Will almost said too much, laid himself bare for this boy, but he stopped himself. 

He had never said a lot and he wouldn’t say too much after so long of quiet. 

Blake took it in stride like he always had and he didn’t mind to continue chattering on and ignore Wills faults like nothing had happened. Will had never been more grateful for a person than he had been for Blake in that moment. 

They walked on until everything suddenly went to shit. Stupid planes, stupid pilot and stupid naivety, they should have kept walking, they should have shot the pilot, but they hadn’t and now Blake was bleeding out in his arms asking the always quiet kid to talk and Will tried, he tried so hard. He told Blake he would write his mum and that he knew the way, that he would find his brother and complete their mission, but more than that he couldn’t say, no matter how much Blake was pleading.

The sounds were stuck in his throat, only exploding out when the soldiers in the truck wouldn’t help him when he had to go on, he had to.

He was focused, he just needed to find the Devons, find Joe. Silently he was walking, but the quiet kept building up in his head until the dam broke when he found the woman with the baby. He recited a poem, it had been Blake’s favourite and he wanted to never stop telling it, but the church bells rang and he had to go, he had to keep on walking.

Not walking, running. He was running through the streets, he was flying through the air and then, then he was floating. For a moment he thought he was floating away, up to the heavens, but he couldn’t. He had a mission. There was a boy, who was singing. It reminded him of Holland, but Holland was dead along with Blake and soon these people would be as well. They would die if he didn’t keep on running, the mission wasn’t over yet, he could still save them.

Then as almost as suddenly as it had started the mission was over, he was standing in front of Joe and wordlessly gave him the rings that had been on the warm fingers of his brother not even a day ago. He stood there feeling empty, before stumbling over the field where he sat under a lone tree and looked out over the field. It was a sunrise and not a sunset. It was quiet and there was no chattering. He was alone and everything was opposite to normal and it would never go back.

He tried to write the letter, but the quiet kid that had found his voice again had run out of words to say. 

The page stayed blank.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading this and if you left kudos or a comment you are my hero and I would kill for you


End file.
